


Single and Double Cross Knotting the Reins

by jjtaylor



Series: Gerard Way's (Vampire) Detective Agency [11]
Category: Bandom, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 10:50:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15071618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjtaylor/pseuds/jjtaylor
Summary: The bells of the church on the corner of his street are ringing out at every quarter hour, counting down until the worst part of Brendon's week begins.It's time for John to come back.





	Single and Double Cross Knotting the Reins

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pennyplainknits](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pennyplainknits/gifts).



Brendon folds away his legal pad when he can't concentrate anymore. The bells of the church on the corner of his street are ringing out at every quarter hour, counting down until the worst part of Brendon's week begins. 

It's time for John to come back.

There's no set schedule for the visits, or there is, but it follows a demon calendar that conveniently only John can read. Brendon doesn't need a calendar, though, not after all this time. He's been feeling the tug of it for days now, his tattoo itchy, the restless feeling in the back of his head spreading through his whole body.

If they don't do it by arrangement, if they don't plan, John will snap back here, and Brendon will lose the ability to speak for several hours. It's only happened a few times, and each one has been desperately awful. John had even gotten so tired of Brendon's miserable, silent moping, that he'd tried to fix it, to return the words, but all magic has fundamentals, and this magic is especially cranky when they're ignored.

Ryan doesn't have to come with John, but he does, most of the time. Brendon's vacillated between thinking it possessiveness, or suspicion, or Ryan trying to pay penance. He doesn't know why Ryan comes anymore, and it's not a question he can ask without starting a fight.

And enough of those fights start on their own.

Spencer had almost canceled plans he'd had for months to be here today, when it was clear John was going to be visiting while Brendon was alone. 

“It's the Mashed Potatones at the Hideout,” Brendon had said. “You got the tickets a year ago!”

“John could probably transport me there in enough time.”

“John could also transport you to Greenland and say he got confused. You didn't sign on for this.”

“Don't talk to me about not signing on for things. Are you really going to make me lay out for you why I stay?”

“No,” Brendon had said. “No, I know why. But Ryan's not - ”

“He's not what, Brendon? He's not going to hurt you again because he's already bound a demon to you? I feel like that's exactly the point.” Spencer went quiet. “And,” Spencer said, after straightening the papers on Brendon's desk into actual neat piles rather than the haphazard stacks Brendon had done, “You weren't the only one he hurt.”

Brendon swallowed his attempt to apologize. Instead, he said, “Maybe you can give me a concert call, especially if they play Chives.”

“They had better play Chives,” Spencer said, and despite offering to cancel a few more times, Brendan had kissed Spencer as he got into the carriage and told him everything would be fine.

 

Brendon ignores the arrival as best he can, distracting himself with casework. Ryan's on some political screed and John is taking notes, or possibly pretending to be a reporter. Unfortunately it's been a really quiet month, and all Brendon has waiting for him right now with any sort of deadline is Blind Order work and potential Clan Code addendums from Pete, and he can't do either of those with visitors in the house. Not these visitors. 

He's restless and can't settle, and that's how he ends up going for a walk down in the fields, looking for the last of the flowers sprouting up, and pretending like this is something he does everyday, and that he's not trying to get as far away from John as he can get without leaving entirely. This is one of the concessions the Blind Order won for him. They couldn't unbind the demon, but they could weave new conditions into the magic, allowances that made it so that Brendon didn't have to go to wherever John was, and that they weren't bound to a room, or even to the house, but the property, or within a reasonable distance of wherever Brendon needed to travel.

Brendan had always thought The Blind Order were enforcers - assassins, yes, but keepers of the rules. After what Ryan did, Brendon came to learn that the heart of the Blind Order's mission was to keep things working. Enforce rules, but when it came to righting wrongs, to bend the ones that couldn't be broken. That's exactly why he'd joined them. To help them bend the rules for someone else when they needed it, the way he had.

The weather is crisp and sunny, and the breeze stirring up fallen leaves is a long held breath exhaled. It gets dark early this time of year, and the sky's already starting to go pink at the horizon. Brendon's wearing only a sweater when he should probably have a coat. He tucks his hands into his sleeves and heads for the copse of maple trees, shot through with orange and red. He can stand under the canopy of leaves and imagine they are a concealment charm.

He thinks, at times like these, about what it might have been like, to be a Daylighter still. Dancing on the edges of this wild magic world, but always able to retreat back to the familiar. To give Pete legal consults without the bone-deep understanding of what was at stake. To laugh at Pete's inevitable stake joke without knowing exactly the ritual he'd need to sever the tethers a demon had woven into his soul.

He'd thought often about murdering Ryan, in an abstract, make him shut up kind of way. He figured their breakup would be full of verbal barbs and long silences, a big blow up of a fight and then a slow path back to friendship. Not this never-ending awkwardness. Not the taste of blood in his mouth when the Clan officials had mistaken him for a vampire and tried to revive him after the binding ritual. Not Ryan's defiant glare when Brendan had screamed himself hoarse. Not a stake and several magical tonics in a locked box in his room if it ever became too much, if he was ever so trapped that he would kill to be free. 

As though these dark musings have summoned him like the scene crasher that he is, Ryan appears, trekking across the fields toward the tree line, an excessively long scarf wrapped just once around his neck and trailing behind him. There's nowhere for Brendon to go except running back into the house, and he still has some dignity, even if he's been found out hiding. He tells himself there's nothing that terrible that Ryan can do to him out here among the autumnal backdrop.

With the first words out of Ryan's mouth, Brendon realizes how mistaken he is.

“Aren't you ever going to ask?” Ryan says,looping the voluminous folds of his scarf around his neck.

“Ask what?” Brendon says. He picks a wet leaf that's stuck to the toe of his shoe and examines it, peering at Ryan through the pale yellow veins.

“Why I bound a demon to you.”

Brendon drops the leaf. 

This. This is why Brendon had leaned on Spencer for these visits. This is why Spencer hadn't wanted to go. He'd known Ryan longer and possibly better than Brendon, and if Spencer had never seen Ryan's betrayal coming, he certainly knew it was only a matter of time until Ryan tried all over again to explain himself, to exempt himself from blame.

“I know why,” Brendon says. “You wanted power.”

“Ok, so, if that's true,” Ryan says, a hand on Brendon's arm, and the easy familiar tugs at him hard, a pulled muscle. “If I wanted power, I've got it, right? So what am I doing with it?” 

Brendon sighs. “I don't know, Ryan, what are you doing with it?”

Ryan pouts at not having his lead followed. “I didn't want the power,” he says. Brendon laughs, ugly and loud. “Ok, ok, power wasn't the first thing I was thinking of. I figured it would be a nice bonus.”

“A bonus,” Brendon says. “A nice perk.”

Even John would be a welcome distraction at this point, but the last Brendon saw of him he had some hedge clippers and was headed for the front lawn. 

“The power wasn't the first thing I wanted. I wanted to make you like me,” Ryan says.

“I was your boyfriend. I already liked you.”

“No,” Ryan says, and Brendon's stomach drops when he understands, his whole body on the downward slope of a roller coaster, falling and falling. “I wanted to make you. Like me.”

“You should have asked,” Brendon shouts. A pair of doves scatter from the ground, flying panicked and peeping up into the trees. “If you wanted to make me into anything, you should have asked. That's the whole point of – of consensual turning, of - “

“I didn't want you to be a vampire, I wanted you to be something more.”

“Well did you get what you wanted?” 

There's more Ryan wants to say; it's waiting there behind the thin line of a frown, but Brendon has had enough. He storms back toward the house, and then leans against the door once he's inside, counting his heartbeats trying to calm down.

Of course that's when he sees the hedge clippers weren't used on the grass, but on his carpets. John is still carefully trimming carpet fibers to his whim. Brendon walks around the sigils, careful not to step on any of them. John grins up at him and Brendon does not say a word.

 

Brendon hides out in Spencer's room. It's not really Spencer's anymore; it's just the valet quarters, but even with most of Spencer's stuff moved into the common spaces they've come to share, this space has Spencer written all over it. The way the armchair faces the window because Spencer loves to stop between chapters when he's reading and look outside. The paintings on the wall from the annual Midnighter sidewalk art festival. The water ring stains on the bedside table from Spencer's nightly glass of lemonade. 

He doesn't know if he'll hear from Spencer until after the concert. Brendon's been in a bunch of concerts where the pit's too rough for a phone call, or the signal too weak. He's decided to wait the rest of the night here regardless. Ryan's driven him to hiding in his own house. Just another instance where Ryan sets the parameters.

Ryan gets all the power. Brendon gets a tattoo, a headache, and a complex about whether or not he's useful enough for people to care about him.

His phone rings. 

He picks it up, cautiously, expecting crowd noises or the blasted bass of a concert through a small phone speaker.

“How's your night going?” Spencer's voice is warm, and he can feel the ghost memory of Spencer speaking the same phrase against his ear right before they fall into bed.

“Oh, just laying in your old room dreaming about getting new tattoos.”

“My old- oh, you're in the servants quarters. Very clever hiding place.”

“Thank you. I needed to hide very, very badly.”

“You ok?” 

“Not yet,” Brendon says. “Just half a day more and I can stop feeling like I'm being haunted.”

“What did Ryan do?”

“He just – I'll tell you about it when you get home. It'll be better when they're gone. Wait, so why can I hear you? Isn't it concert time?”

Spencer laughs, almost a crow. He's about to show off, and Brendon can't help the grin that spreads across his face. Spencer's magic has branched out the past few months. Once Spencer had revealed to Brendon he was a changeling, he'd also started using his fairy magic more regularly. Spencer's not entirely comfortable with this part of himself, but it's something that they've come to bond over. Embracing change. Trying to figure themselves out with one another.

“Check this out,” Spencer says. And in a breath, Brendon is transported by the sound. It's almost as if he's there, but better – just the shuffling of the crowd, no reverb, no ache in his ears – sweet live music, a good band playing a really good song.

“I wish you'd come with me.” Spencer says as the Mashed Potatones rock the fuck out.

“Me too,” Brendon says. There's a way they could make it work, maybe. But not without having to bring Ryan and John and Brendon just – that's not how he wants to go to see Spencer's favorite band with him.“He didn't even say he was sorry,” Brendon says. He should have hung up moments ago, let Spencer get back to his concert. Stop bringing down the concert euphoria. But Spencer listens, in no rush.

“I know it doesn't make it better, but he is, you know.”

“He's sorry things didn't work out the way he planned.” Brendon says. “And even if he really is sorry, sometimes you need to say things aloud.”

Brendon hears the next song kick up, bass thump and enthusiastic strumming. “I'm glad I got you in the divorce,” Spencer says. “If we're saying things aloud.”

“You've changed my life, Spencer Smith,” Brendon says. And then, because that's not enough, “I love you.”

Spencer's contented sigh breathes through the phone as close as if he were right there. “I love you, too, sir,” he says, and they both laugh until there are tears. It's a kind of catharsis Brendon didn't think he'd get today – nor that he deserved.

“Go rock out,” Brendon says.

“Next time, you're coming with me.”

“Maybe they'll do a transitional zones tour.”

“They'd better,” Spencer says.

When they hang up, Brendon almost feels whole again.

 

Brendon sleeps better than he expected, tucked into the bed where Spencer slept for years and Brendon pined for him (and maybe Spencer pined for him, too) and he's feeling cheery and hopeful when he wakes. He could make breakfast in the valet quarters and stay a reclusive host, but his favorite coffee is in the main kitchen. Something about the coffee jogs his memory, and Brendon's subconscious coughs up the realization that he recognizes the sigils John has carved into his sitting room. He spends an hour hacking the carpet before a little bit of spilled water can conjure a mermaid army.

After that, hiding is a bit of a moot point. 

“So, we're going,” Ryan says, popping into the kitchen but not stepping all the way in, like he needs to be invited. Brendon considers offering Ryan some coffee, but then thinks that no, he doesn't have to share this, too.

“Ok,” is all Brendon says.

A few moment later, as Brendon's stirring too much cream into his coffee and waiting for his head to clear enough that he can review a few case notes, John appears, neglecting the door entirely and manifesting, barefoot, on the kitchen island. Brendon drops the container of cream. “I'm sorry,” John says and Brendan gapes at him. “I thought you'd want the power.”

“What – what power?” Brendon stutters. “I've never – you've never given me anything other than this ridiculous tattoo.”

“You never asked,” John says.

“So that's all I'd have to do? Ask for something?”

John's eyes brighten. “No, but it's a start.”

Brendon doesn't want this, doesn't want any of it, but this new information, the idea that there's something just out of his reach, and that there has been all along, makes a fury course through him that he thought he was done with. It had been the first thing he'd really felt, after the binding. When the fog cleared, he'd been furious at everything, at Ryan, at John, at himself, at the whole magical world. He'd folded it up, and tucked it away, but it hadn't weakened at all. 

Could he finally get something good out of this, something powerful and meaningful? He's disgusted with himself that he's considering it.

“Get off my fucking counter top,” is all he can mange to say.

“See, that's what I mean,” John says, “I figured you'd be ready. At least by now.”

“Ready,” Brendon says. The spilled cream has finally made it's way to the edge and is dripping off.

“To take the reins from Ryan.”

Brendon's not sure he's been so thoroughly at a loss for words in his life.

“He didn't tell you,” John says, “because if you don't know, he can hang on longer. But everyone knows the one the demon's bound to has more power than the binder.”

“No,” Brendan finally manages. “No, not everyone knows that.”

“Here,” John says, and points at Brendon. Brendon holds his hands out, silently asking why. “The cream.”

Brendon reaches for a paper towel, but before he does, the slightest movement of his hand lifts the cream. It floats in the air, droplets hanging frozen.

“You -” Brendon says.

“You,” John corrects.

Fascinated, heart pounding, Brendan guides the floating cream toward the sink.

“No, no, no, no, don't throw it away!” John protests. “Turn it back into milk. Whip it. Make it into something.”

Brendon does not start singing 'whip it, whip it good,' though he wants to. It's possible he's hysterical. Brendon carries the floating cream over to the sink, lets it wash down the drain.

John sighs in disapproval. “See, this is what I mean. I thought you'd be ready.”

“I'm not,” Brendon says. He should say he'll never be ready, that he'll never want this.

“Later, then,” John says, and disappears. Brendon isn't sure if it's a goodbye or a promise.

 

Brendon feels the moment John and Ryan cross his property line, the terrible suffocating weight lifted – at least for another week or two. He sinks down onto the floor, letting his legs splay out. 

He takes out his phone and texts Spencer.

_Can't wait for you to get home._

_14 hours_ Spencer texts back.

Funny, it's the exactly number of droplets of cream that had hung suspended in the air.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Single and Double Cross Knotting the Reins](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15179687) by [Pennyplainknits](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pennyplainknits/pseuds/Pennyplainknits)




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